Torn
by Sammy07
Summary: Adam and Mallick have been living together for over a year, and although the two have shared many of their deepest, darkest secrets throughout their relationship, there is one thing Mallick never dared to share. Adam/Mallick, some Adam/Lawrence. SLASH.
1. Chapter 1

Adam/Mallick! This pairing has a few followers now. Many have said Mallick is a lot like Adam in terms of personality, and I agree. That's why I (and some others) think they make such a sweet couple. We've dubbed this pairing "AngryShipping." Hopefully it'll stick, because it's an oddly appropriate name. XD This fic is primarily Adam/Mallick, but it has Adam/Lawrence, too. My natural ChainShipping instincts, I guess.

Anyway, please read, enjoy, and... maybe review? Pretty please? Reviews are always nice. XD

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Adam sometimes wondered if Mallick Scott was a pyromaniac, or at least very close to it.

He knew he had problems that were far bigger than his inferiority complex or the lingering dread and psychological issues they both faced from their past experiences with the notorious serial killer Jigsaw.

Adam knew, as every night usually ended with the two of them lying naked and spent on whichever piece of furniture they'd started on, and that was when he could see several new burn marks on the older man's arms and wrists. Adam had to wonder if his friend was into self-harm, too, or if the excitement of holding matches just made his hands shake so much that he ended up burning himself by accident.

Adam and Mallick had many things in common, as they'd learned shortly after meeting. Both were a rare instance of survivors of the horrific torture-traps of a former small, deranged group of serial killers. Mallick was the only survivor of five people who had been thrown into a more-or-less fatal obstacle course in an abandoned building. The 'game' had called for teamwork and cooperation, but paranoia and distrust had ended up causing the victims to turn on each other in desperate attempts to save their own lives.

Mallick himself hadn't killed anyone, at least not intentionally. He felt responsible for the death of the young woman Ashley, as it had been his panicking and refusal to work together with the others that had triggered the first trap and decapitated her. Two of the other victims, Charles and Luba, had chosen to single out Mallick at different times, attempting to murder him in order to save themselves, but had been foiled, Charles by Luba and Luba by Brit, the last victim of the game. Mallick often joked grimly that he'd been picked on the most because of his helpless and vulnerable demeanor.

The woman Brit, who by the end was the only other surviving victim, had bled to death from the final test, a deadly machine that had required ten pints of blood, or five pints each from the last two members of the game, to open the door to the building and let the victims escape. Mallick himself had had his right arm severed from the elbow-down because of his part in that trap and had been very close to bleeding to death himself.

Mallick had told Adam, and the police who'd interviewed him after his ordeal, that he'd been chosen to be in the 'game' because of a serious drug-addiction, but maybe it had been more than that. Maybe the main Jigsaw killer, John Kramer, who had been so good at picking out the flaws and weaknesses in his victims, had noticed Mallick's unnerving fascination with fire, too. Adam doubted he'd ever ask, but that didn't stop him from wondering.

Mallick, unlike the majority of the killers' victims, had actually expected to be in one of the traps sooner or later, and, filled with self-loathing and despair that only a terrible drug like heroin could cause, hadn't much cared to begin with, even claiming once that he deserved to suffer.

He had survived, though. By mercilessly mutilating his right arm in his final 'test,' he'd apparently proven satisfactorily that he had enough gratitude for the life he'd been given to be allowed to keep it.

Adam, on the other hand, had a longer and somewhat more complicated story. He had been victimized about a year before Mallick, when Jigsaw, who had already been dead by the time of Mallick's game and had thus had a cop named Mark Hoffman working for him then, had still been alive and well enough to manage his own traps. Adam, along with another man, Dr. Lawrence Gordon, had been kidnapped and taken to an abandoned warehouse building where he'd been chained by the ankle to a pipe in a dilapidated bathroom. Lawrence had been chained at the opposite side of the room. Between them had been the 'corpse' of a supposed third victim.

This had been among one of Kramer's more complicated traps, as well as one of his earlier ones. Lawrence had been told that he'd basically have to murder Adam if he ever wanted to see his wife and daughter, who had been kidnapped by one of Jigsaw's accomplice's, ever again. Adam had been chosen for the trap because of his line of work, which was pretty much following people around upon request of the person's suspicious family members or acquaintances and taking incriminating pictures of them.

Lawrence had been chosen partly because he'd been too indifferent and uncaring towards his various patients, even when he'd been telling them they were terminally ill. John Kramer, who had been struck with an inoperable brain tumor, had just happened to be one of Lawrence's patients. He hadn't much taken to so callously being told that he was going to die.

The other reason Lawrence had been chosen had been because he'd been cheating on his wife and beginning to become unappreciative of his family. Adam had actually been paid by a paranoid ex-cop by the name of David Tapp, who'd been obsessed with finding the then-unknown Kramer, to follow _Lawrence_ around, as he had believed him to be the serial killer. This connection was what had brought the two men together in the trap.

Eventually, Adam and Lawrence had managed to work together enough to figure out the basis of their game and why they'd been chosen, which had sparked feelings between them ranging from annoyance, acceptance, betrayal, loathing, friendship, and, finally, a deep bond that would never be broken. Lawrence, desperate to save his family, had used the hacksaw provided to cut through his foot - a hacksaw that was too weak to cut through the metal pipes or chains that trapped the victims, but not too weak to cut through the much more delicate flesh of a human - and had tried to kill Adam, but instead had only wounded him in the right shoulder.

Shortly after, another of Jigsaw's victims, Zep, whom Adam and Lawrence had believed to be the actual killer, had arrived and attempted to shoot Lawrence for failing to kill his cell mate before the designated time limit ran out. Adam, however, who had been lying still and terrified this entire time, had suddenly sprung up and, in a fit of desperation and fear, had managed to beat the man to death with a rusty basin lid.

Adam would never forget what had happened after that — not that he'd forget anything that had happened that horrible day, but this had been particularly memorable. Lawrence, literally bleeding to death from his severed ankle and still worried sick about his family, had crawled over to Adam and grabbed the sobbing man's trembling body and held it close, touching his head to his in a weak but fervent gesture of comfort. He'd then assured the younger victim that he was going to be okay and that he would go and find help for him.

Adam, at the time, had clutched at the surgeon with every remaining bit of his rapidly-diminishing strength and begged him not to go, but Lawrence had pulled away, stopping first to tell him, once again, that they'd both be all right. What had happened then, Adam hated to think about more than anything. No sooner had Lawrence gone had the 'corpse' lying in the middle of the room risen to its feet and revealed itself as the real Jigsaw killer, before leaving Adam to die in his prison.

The killer hadn't bothered to stop Lawrence, probably because he hadn't thought the man would be any threat in his current condition. Lawrence, however, determined and desperate to live up to his promise, as well as to protect his family, had managed to crawl his way to the corpse of David Tapp, who had fruitlessly attempted to follow Zep down the maze of sewers that led eventfully to the room where the game had taken place.

Using the cell phone he'd found on Tapp's person, Lawrence had then succeeded in calling the police and telling them in slurred mumbles something of his and Adam's ordeals. The police had promptly traced the location from the cell phone, and help had arrived within two hours, though Lawrence had taken several more to reach the phone. Both Adam and Lawrence had been rescued, but the Jigsaw killer had failed to be found as John Kramer, whom Adam and Lawrence had identified, had disappointed immediately after. Lawrence's wife and daughter were also safe, having managed to escape the wrath of their kidnapper, Zep.

Adam and Lawrence had both suffered severe blood loss and mental trauma, but they welcomed that gladly over the even worse things that could have happened. After some time in the hospital and a few interviews with the police, the two surviving victims had been free to go. Lawrence had hugged Adam before they'd parted, and it had taken every last bit of self-constraint and willpower for the young photographer not to break down and cry like a baby in the other man's arms.

The two continued to see each other occasionally, going out to lunch or a movie, which Lawrence always paid for, or occasionally to each other's houses, plus calling or emailing each other semi-regularly. Lawrence had also paid for Adam's medical expenses such as the removal of the bullet from his shoulder, which had been horribly expensive, and refused to acknowledge the large sum of money as a loan when Adam had offered to pay him back with monthly payments from the first legitimate part-time job he could find.

Lawrence now stayed with his wife and daughter, attempting to reconcile and admit to the mistakes he had made, although he didn't seem to enjoy talking about that aspect of his life too much. Adam had met Alison and Diana a few times when he'd gone over to visit Lawrence, and, though Diana got along quite well with him, Alison's opinion of the ex photographer was lukewarm at best.

The last time Adam and Lawrence had seen each other physically had been about a month ago. That didn't worry Adam overly, since they had gone through longer periods without seeing one another, but that didn't stop him from missing the damn guy like grim death when they were apart. Missing Lawrence had been the main reason he'd previously taken to going to the bar after his job; he'd attempted to try to drown out some of his sorrows with alcohol.

That was how Adam and Mallick had met: in a bar. Adam had run out of money and Mallick, noticing, had ordered him the drink he'd wanted. Adam, surprised by this act of intimacy, had muttered an awkward thanks and attempted to move away, but Mallick had stopped him, eventually getting him to talk.

Something about the man's demeanor had comforted Adam. He hadn't been able to place it, but there'd been a strange familiarity and closeness in Mallick and the way he'd talked that had reminded him of Lawrence and himself. He'd later realized that this 'demeanor' was probably something all surviving victims of Jigsaw's games had.

Mallick had made some witty remarks about Adam's poor finances and offered to treat him to lunch the following day. Adam, who at that point hadn't spoken to Lawrence for a few weeks and was feeling lonely, had reluctantly accepted.

It had been at the lunch, which had been at a fancy, expensive seafood restaurant, that the two men had found out the other had been in one of Jigsaw's deadly 'games.'

Their common grounds had first been hinted, oddly enough, with each of their right arm injuries: Adam's scarred shoulder, which still hurt quite frequently, and Mallick's whole right arm, which, despite having been fixed as well as his father's vast bank account had allowed, was still very noticeable.

This had, naturally, eventually led to them talking, however reluctantly, about their ordeals. Obviously, talking about what he'd gone through had forced Adam to talk about Lawrence, too, and he'd been surprised at how hard that had seemed. It was hard to talk about a man you cared about so much that you knew you'd give your life for him, even if he had his own life and family to take care of before you. Mallick had seemed to understand, though. He'd smiled, almost sadly, and remarked: "Sounds like one hell of a guy."

'_One hell of a guy..._' Wasn't _that_ the understatement of the century? Lawrence was much more than one hell of a guy. He was... Fuck, he had been _everything_ to Adam. After all, Adam had no friends or relatives that cared enough for him to be of a great comfort. As pathetic as it sometimes seemed, Lawrence had been Adam's only real motivation for getting up in the morning.

Until he'd met Mallick, of course. He cared for him, too. More than he could ever express, since he had never been that good at putting words together. But he still knew that a great deal of his heart - God, that sounded so corny... - would always belong to Lawrence, no matter how much he loved his rich-boy, ex-drug-addict, possibly-pyromaniac boyfriend. You just couldn't go through what Adam and Lawrence had gone through together without becoming indisputably attached.

Mallick had given up drugs since meeting Adam. He'd been on the verge of giving them up even before that. Jigsaw's 'games' did that to you. Mallick had realized that he was destroying his life, that he'd been given a second chance that none of his other fellow-victims had gotten. When he'd first met Adam, he'd been down to a couple of marijuana puffs a week, a great improvement over what he'd been doing before. Not just with marijuana, but also with crack, heroin, speed, ice, and every other illegal substance in the book.

Adam himself had cut right back in his own unhealthy habits, which for him had been cigarettes, since his ordeal. He'd done so at Lawrence's request, as well as for similar reasonings of 'revaluation' and 'second chances' to Mallick's. Before his 'game,' he'd spent over half his dishonest earnings on cigarettes, fluctuating between two and three packets a day. Afterwards, he'd managed to force himself into taking that same amount _weekly_. And, after meeting Mallick, he was lucky to smoke one packet a week. Well, "lucky" wasn't really the right word, since the young man was happy to be almost-rid of the vile things, but still.

Adam knew, though, that despite Mallick's resolutions and 're-finding' of himself from his ordeals, the guy was still unreasonably fascinated by fire. He had a lush, old-fashioned fireplace in his apartment which he insisted on lighting every night, unless the weather was so hot he was forced to admit that the air conditioner was a better idea.

When the fire was lit, Mallick would stare into its flames, his eyes transfixed. Adam hated it, but he couldn't think of anything to do about it. The obsession wasn't harming anyone, after all. Not even him. After staring into the fire for ten minutes or so, Mallick's need seemed to be satisfied, and he would make up for the period of silence and neglect by fervently grabbing Adam around the waist, wrestling him to the soft, lavish carpet of the room, and submitting himself to kissing and touching his lover like he hadn't gotten any in years.

If Adam had known the real reason why Mallick couldn't let go of his apparent obsession with fire, he probably never would've let himself get so attached to the guy in the first place.

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Ugh, kind of a boring chapter, I know. I don't think I've ever used the past participle so much in one chapter. XD But don't worry; this chapter was just to set the mood of the fic. The next few chapters will be going over how Adam and Mallick met in greater detail, their bonding when they realize they were both victims of a Jigsaw game, and, of course, the red-hot ass-fucking that their friendship pretty quickly turns into! ;) And yes, Adam does eventually find out that Mallick accidentally killed a bunch of people with his previous drug-obsession. LOL, spoilers FTW, huh?


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks for all the reviews, guys! ^_^ This next chapter turned out to be quite a bit longer than I intended. I thought about splitting it into two parts, but I just couldn't seem to break it up. So, please forgive the longness (XD), and enjoy! :)

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Adam sat, slightly slumped, at the front counter of the Belly-up Tavern, just finishing up his fourth drink. The place was the closest bar to where he lived. He couldn't afford much gas for his car beyond what he used to get to and from work, and driving in his condition wouldn't be a very good idea, anyway. He wasn't quite drunk, but he was certainly getting there, feeling pleasantly lightheaded.

He didn't like to drink to solve his problems. He didn't very often, either. Only when things got _really_ bad. Being a surviver of the notorious Jigsaw killers' 'games' meant that you had a pretty good appreciation for life, even if you weren't living yours very well. Adam certainly didn't want to become an alcoholic after everything he'd suffered to stay alive. He would've liked to become a rich, successful businessman, or at least have a well-paying job and a nice mansion or luxury apartment to live in, if he'd had the choice.

As it was, though, he had to settle for the eleven-dollars-an-hour magazine editing job he was stuck with right now. He wasn't likely to get anything better without any qualifications, after all, and at least he was working with photos. Sure, he would've preferred to take his own photos than mess around with others', but not a lot of people were going to hire a man who not only had no professional training in photography, but who hadn't even finished high school.

His poor finances and crappy job weren't the reason Adam was drinking, though. He was drinking because he was feeling lonely. He hadn't seen Lawrence, another rare surviver of the Jigsaw killer, and one who had been in the 'game' with Adam to boot, for almost three weeks. He'd gone for longer periods of time without seeing him, but that didn't make it any easier now.

Adam didn't like to ring up Lawrence too often, in case the older man thought him clingy and grew sick of him. Lawrence was usually the one who rang him, and he was the one who usually insisted that they catch up. And, as pathetic as it might have seemed, those rare moments he was able to spend with the surgeon were the highlights of Adam's life. He lived for them, for _him_. After all, if it hadn't been for Lawrence, Adam would have been nothing but a decomposed corpse rotting in a dilapidated bathroom by now.

Adam hurriedly pushed thoughts of his near escape from his mind. He really didn't need to freak himself out at this time of night, especially with the ten minute walk back to his apartment in the pitch-black night that he would have to make alone when he was finished here. He drained the last few drops of his drink and reached into his wallet to pay for another.

To his annoyance, though, he found that he had run out of money. All he had was a dollar and a few pennies, which wouldn't even pay for a quarter of a glass of beer, let alone the full one he wanted. He had more money at home, but, because he was somewhat sensible, he didn't bring large bunches of the stuff out with him, partly to stop the temptation of spending his rent money on alcohol, and partly because he lived in a bad neighborhood and didn't want to get the best parts of his paycheck stolen by street-thugs.

If Adam hadn't been so out of it, he might have noticed that, for the past half an hour, a young man had been watching him discreetly from a table a few feet away.

He looked only a few years older than Adam, had messy, unkempt hair that was between brown and pale gold in color, a slight figure, though he was at least more masculine than Adam, and pale skin, much like the man he was staring at. He had a well-proportioned face whose expression was somewhere between aggressive and paranoid, was clean-shaven, and had piercing bluish green eyes. And, although he was very roughly dressed, he had long sleeves which covered his arms all the way to the wrists so that only his hands were visible, despite it being mid-summer and quite hot, even at night. Like Adam, he appeared to be alone.

Seemingly noting the other man's lack of finances, the young man got up from his own table and walked over to the ex photographer, sitting down next to him semi-casually. Adam barely took any notice of him. He thought he was sitting there so that he would have a good place to order drinks from. The young man smiled slightly, looking at Adam out of the corner of his eye, and took out a twenty dollar note.

"Hey," he said pleasantly to the bartender, an unshaven, irritable-looking man in his mid-forties. "I'll have a refill of whatever this guy just had."

He took the glass from where Adam had set it after emptying it and handed it to the bartender, whose scowl turned into a smile when he noticed the generous amount of money the man was offering him for only a five-dollar drink.

The bartender wasted no time in refilling the glass and exchanging it for the twenty dollar note, clearly worried that the man would change his mind about the money when he realized how cheap the drink really was. He didn't, though. Taking the glass from the bartender with a word of thanks, the young man set the drink down in front of Adam.

Adam, whose dulled mind had only just been beginning to catch on to the fact that his glass had been taken, started slightly when he realized that he had just been treated. He looked carefully at the young man beside him, who was smiling back at him pleasantly, and felt uneasy. People usually didn't just buy others drinks out of pure kindness alone. Clearly the guy wanted something, and Adam was pretty sure he knew what that was.

"Thanks," he said awkwardly, and attempted to stand up. The alcohol made that quite difficult, though, and he found himself back on his seat two seconds later.

"Hey, take it easy," the young man said, looking at Adam with a half-cautious, half-amused expression. "You don't wanna fall and break something."

Adam wasn't sure if the guy's 'something' meant breaking an object or breaking one of his own bones, but he was too lightheaded to feel overly annoyed at the warning, the way he usually would've. Or maybe he was just grateful that he'd been bought a drink, regardless of the man's intentions.

Adam mumbled something slurred that could've been anything from a 'yes' to a 'fuck you' and lifted up his beer refill. Wanting to finish so he could leave as soon as possible and get back to his nice, warm bed, Adam put the glass to his lips, tipped back his head, and drained the bitter liquid in one go. He regretted doing so immediately afterwards, however, when, two seconds later, an unbearable dizzy sensation ran through his head, accompanied by a strong feeling of drowsiness.

Groaning, the photographer set the glass back down, resisting the urge to attempt to get to his feet a second time, since he knew he'd only fall back down again. God, why had he let himself get this... Well, not drunk. He refused to admit that. Why had he let himself get to this _stage_? He was usually much more responsible than that, no matter how depressed he happened to be feeling.

The older man was still beside him, staring and smiling. That didn't surprise Adam, though.

"I'm Mallick," the man said, extending one of his long-sleeved hands towards his companion. "What's your name?"

If Adam hadn't been feeling so out of it, he would've groaned inwardly. He ignored the offered hand.

_This is how it starts. First the name, then the number..._

Adam managed to stop himself from saying "Fuck you. That's my name," and instead replied in a manner closer to his age-range.

"A-Adam," he replied, noting with annoyance the increased slurring in his voice. His brain was becoming pretty foggy, too. Maybe this guy, Mallick, had given him a date-rape drug? He wouldn't put it past him. People resorted to some drastic stuff these days.

"I... I should really... go," he added, holding his left hand to his forehead in a vain attempt to clear it.

Mallick retracted his hand, looking somewhat disappointed.

"Hey, come on," he said sulkily. The tone suited his voice well, like the guy had grown up doing a lot of whining. "I bought you a drink. At least return the favor and talk to me for a minute or two."

_Right. Because _talking_ is all you want from me._

"I-I'm... I'm pretty drunk," Adam muttered back. He didn't like to admit it, but it was true. There was no use denying it anymore. Maybe his admirer would be less interested in him if he told him that he couldn't fuck to save his life while he was intoxicated.

A brief look of concern crossed Mallick's face, though it was quickly suppressed.

"You're not driving, are you?" he asked carefully.

Adam sighed. To be fair, the guy probably didn't realize how stupid his question was. He didn't know that surviving a torture-test of one of the most notorious serial killers in the last century ensured, among other things, that you'd never even _think_ about getting behind the wheel of a car drunk. You treasured your life - and others' - more than that. Hell, even before Jigsaw, Adam had never driven drunk, though that might just have been because he rarely drove. Gas was expensive.

"No," Adam replied, furrowing his brow and pushing the fingers of the hand there against his eye sockets. Dots of black flashed briefly in front of his eyes. "I... I live about ten... ten... y-you know." _Damn it, what was it again?_

"Ten blocks away?" Mallick offered, seemingly trying to hold back a chuckle. Adam frowned. _No, that doesn't sound right..._

"No, uh..." He thought for a moment. "Ten... s-sec... seconds?"

This time, Mallick did laugh, albeit only briefly.

"Minutes," he corrected when he'd regained his composure.

Adam stopped pushing against his eye sockets.

"Oh... Yeah."

God, he was drunker than he thought, and that had to be _pretty_ drunk because Adam knew he was well-near wasted.

"If you can remember where you live," Mallick said, still smiling, "I can give you a lift. You probably shouldn't be walking very far if you can't even remember the difference between seconds and minutes, anyway."

Adam sighed again, too drunk to put into words how annoyed he was feeling at that moment. He didn't want to accept a lift from this guy, but the small amounts of rationality that he had remaining told him that walking home in his state wasn't the best idea. His rationality didn't bother to point out that Mallick could very well be a kidnapper who just wanted to get him into his car so he could drive him back to his lair and have his way with him as much as he wanted, though, which was something Adam's paranoid, post-Jigsaw - and non-drunk - self would've been quick to point out.

"I-I guess," Adam said after a few seconds. "I-If you... don't mind. I l-live in, uh... th-thirty-one Clarence Street. South-West, um..."

"South-West Land Heights, yeah," Mallick said, nodding. He moved back in his stool, setting his feet on the floor and holding his right arm out to his companion. "That's not far. Here, lean on me."

Adam didn't fully register the meaning behind Mallick's words until said man had wrapped his outstretched arm around Adam's waist and pulled the two of them to their feet. The younger man staggered, party from the rush of blood that had gone to his head from the movement, and partly from Mallick's action. Even though he knew he needed the help, Adam resented the contact. Reluctance to be touched, especially by strangers, was another thing Jigsaw's 'games' did to you.

"God... damn it," Adam muttered under his breath as Mallick began to guide him out of the bar. He didn't know if the older man heard him or not.

Outside, the warm, evening summer breeze blew softly. Adam felt it against his clammy skin, and it made him feel a little better. Mallick led, or supported, him to a fancy, expensive-looking Mercedes, as silver and shiny as an oversized piece of jewelry.

Adam was too tanked to register the fact that this car must have cost at least three times more than he earned annually at his crappy, eleven-dollars-an-hour editing job until after Mallick had unlocked the car doors with the button on his jet-black key pad, opened the passenger-side door, and helped him into the seat before walking around to the door on the driver's side, opening it, and getting into his own seat.

The car's engine started up the moment Mallick put his keys into the ignition and turned them. It didn't stutter or protest the way Adam's cheap 1989 secondhand wreck always did. Not that that surprised him, of course.

"Nice... car," he slurred, managing with difficulty to force on his seatbelt. Mallick already had his on.

Mallick glanced briefly at Adam, then back out the front windscreen as he began to pull out of the car spot he'd parked in. Luckily, there weren't many other cars around at this time, since most of the bar-goers were smart enough to car-pool, take a taxi, or walk, like Adam had, so they were able to get back onto the road without any delays.

"Thanks," Mallick said, cheeks flushing slightly. He didn't take his eyes from the road. "It's... It's my dad's."

Well, that was a lie. It was his, but his dad had bought it for him. Adam didn't need to know that, though. A guy who couldn't even afford a five-dollar drink probably wouldn't take well to a guy whose father was easily rich enough to buy the bar they'd just left and who bought his son just about anything he wanted.

Mallick's father, Richard Scott, wasn't exactly what one would call Father of the Year. It wasn't that he was and had been almost always too busy to pay attention to his only son or his wife, the latter of which had died in a car accident over a decade ago; he was a successful, acclaimed lawyer, so of course he had to put in a lot of hours at work.

The reason he wasn't what one would call Father of the Year was because he was self-absorbed and ignorant. Just about all the spare time he did have, he dedicated to himself, rather than to his son. Instead of giving Mallick overwhelming love and attention, he gave him money, which was better than nothing, he supposed. There were some fathers who gave neither love nor money, and sometimes beatings or worse. Richard hadn't laid a hand on his son since Mallick was seven, when he'd spilled orange soda all over his father's brand new business suit.

Mallick could remember only two distinct occasions when his dad had acted like he'd cared more about him than he let on. The first time was when his mother had died sixteen years ago. Mallick had been nineteen and sleeping off one of the worst hangovers he'd ever had, the result of a party he'd gone to the night before. He'd gone to a lot of parties back then.

Richard had come in at seven-thirty in the morning and shaken him awake, or, more accurately, brought him out of his passing out. His face had been pale, and his cheeks, for the first time Mallick ever remembered, had been wet with tears. Once sure his son was conscious, Richard had said, his voice trembling almost on the brink of inaudibility: "Mallick... Son... It's... It's your mother," and he hadn't needed to go any further than that.

Even in his hungover state, his father's condition was enough to tell Mallick that his mother was dead. She'd died when she'd lost control of the new, barely-week old car Richard had bought her for their anniversary, crashing it into a telephone pole. It had been winter, the road had been wet from drying snow and hail, and she'd been going too fast. Thankfully she hadn't taken anyone else with her in the crash.

Mallick had fallen into his father's arms and sobbed like a baby, his head still aching, vomit in the back of his throat, and Richard had held him unprotestingly, crying with him, despite the fact that he'd always said that only pussies cried and that he hadn't held his son in his arms since he'd been a toddler.

The second time, of course, had been after... _that_, just over one year before the present day. Mallick didn't remember much about lying, more dead than alive, beside the dreaded sawing contraption that had taken more than half his blood and mangled his right arm beyond practically all recognition. He didn't remember fellow-victim Brit crawling out through the door their blood had unlocked, encountering a detective who had stumbled on to the place, and dying barely five minutes after the detective had called for paramedics. He didn't remember the detective finding him and fruitlessly attempting to bandage the mangled remains of his right arm to stop the bleeding, then waiting with him for the paramedics to come, hoping that there would be at least one surviver in all this.

He didn't remember the paramedics arriving, lifting his limp, pale-as-death body onto a stretcher, and sprinting with him back to their ambulance, where they put an oxygen mask over his face and stuck endless IV- and other substance-tubes into his body, pumping the desperately needed fluids back into him. He didn't remember being rushed to the local emergency room at twice the specified speed limit, arriving at said emergency room, and being tended to urgently for close to two hours, his life hanging by a thread. He didn't remember the hours of heavy, drug-induced sleep he'd taken part in after that.

What he _did_ remember, though, was waking up to a near-hysterical sobbing and horribly tight grip on his untainted arm, and a voice, almost unfamiliar in its panic, babbling: "Mallick, Jesus Christ, Mallick, my poor baby, my poor Mallick..."

Even when he'd made a huge effort and opened his heavy eyelids to look at his addresser and seen who it was, he hadn't quite been able to believe it was really his father. The words and behavior had sounded more like his mom than his dad. Hell, he even remembered his mother acting in a similar, though obviously less frantic way when he'd gotten a nail lodged in his palm as he'd been playing outside when he was twelve. Richard had barely looked up from his newspaper then.

He'd hugged him in the hospital, too. One-armed, delicately, in light of his son's condition, but he'd hugged him. And Mallick, even in his drugged, confused, post-pain-and-terror state, had savored the gesture. It'd been like... well, having a dad that cared. Not that it had lasted long. The next couple of days after, when it was a sure thing that the patient was going to live and make a full recovery, the second feat more because of his father's vast bank account that could easily pay for the six-figure operation to fix his bisected hand and arm than anything else, Richard had lost interest again and gone back to work.

He'd assumed Mallick had been targeted by the Jigsaw killers because of his irresponsible, wasteful, and dangerous lifestyle. He'd never even stopped to suspect that there might have been another reason, something he knew about just as well as his son, something that was much, much worse than shooting heroin and compulsively fucking anything willing and human. Something...

"Oh... Okay."

Adam's muttered, drunken voice broke into Mallick's thoughts. It had only been about thirty seconds since he'd told him it was his dad's car, but it felt like much longer than that. Thinking about his dad, his past ordeals, and that... _other_ thing always seemed to pause time for Mallick. He forced himself to focus on driving to the address Adam had given him without crashing into anything. Or anybody.

Of course, though he was too drunk and too unperceptive to realize it at this point, Adam's suspicions on why Mallick was taking such an interest to him were right on the money. Mallick liked sex. Perhaps it was the result of growing up with such a rich father, a rich rather who had always bought him whatever he asked for, but Mallick had always had an addictive personality.

If he was given an action figure he liked for his birthday one year, he'd immediately want every other figure in the set. If his mom took him to an amusement park one weekend while Richard was absorbed in his work, he'd demand to go again and again until he got sick it. If he tried heroin at a party, just once to see how it felt...

But that was in the past.

In the case of sexual encounters, if he had one once on his sixteenth birthday, when he'd thrown a party at his parents' huge, unoccupied luxury apartment - and gotten grounded for a month the next day when his parents had come home to find the place trashed - if one of the girls he'd invited, a girl whose name he couldn't even remember anymore, had staggered up to him, utterly wasted, and slurred to her equally wasted host about how she had to thank him for inviting her to such a wild bash, then clumsily sucked him off under the table he was slumped at... Well, Mallick would want more.

Mallick had fucked so many girls and guys - he honestly hadn't cared what he'd fucked, as long as it was human and at least sixteen, or eighteen when he had come of age - and _been_ fucked himself by so many guys, it was a wonder he'd never gotten any sexually transmitted diseases. Admittedly, he _did_ always use a condom, or, if he was on the bottom, and if he was sober enough to remember, insist that whoever was fucking him don a condom, too, but still.

He supposed he was lucky he hadn't impregnated anyone yet, either. As far as he knew, at least. That was one of the reasons he'd taken to fucking guys more after a few years; you didn't have the danger of accidentally creating an eighteen-year-long commitment with them. He preferred them, too. When he'd first become a sex-maniac, the idea of sticking it in guys - or letting them stick it in him - hadn't disgusted him as much as he'd thought it would. He lived in a revolutionary, open-minded age, after all. As long as his parents never found out, it didn't matter. Initially, he hadn't cared if his partners were male or female. He'd just been so desperate for sex, he'd gone with whoever was willing.

Before long, though, a few small things had tended to make him favor the guys. He liked the moans and growls they made more. He liked that they usually had more energy and strength and were usually so much more eager to climax. He liked that, if he was on top, he could reach down and grasp bare flesh around the nipples, instead of those... _sandbags_ girls had. In contrast, he liked being able to grip and fondle _something_ between his partner's legs, a quality that women so sadly lacked; he liked feeling that something pulse and shudder between his fingers as he coaxed it to release.

And, most of all, he liked the fact that guys very rarely screamed out halfway through: "Stop! You're hurting me! For the love of God, get off!" and force him to withdraw - when a person said 'no,' you stopped immediately, or it was rape - cock still pulsing and body still shuddering with desire.

He also liked how it felt to have others in him. Though he preferred going on top, he still liked to be penetrated himself a good deal, and unless a girl had a dildo or was willing to finger him, and that was very rare, only guys could really satisfy that longing.

After his ordeal with the Jigsaw killer, though, in addition to giving up most of the drugs he'd been addicted to almost outright, Mallick had cut back a good deal on the sex, and the few times he had touched on it again, it had only been with guys. He wanted even less to risk bringing a child into the world at this point, now that he knew how ugly and fucked up life could really be.

The reason he'd sought out Adam had been twofold. First was that he was attractive. _Very_ attractive, in fact. Probably the most attractive guy he'd ever seen outside of a movie star. Second was that Adam had looked so lonely and miserable in that bar. The few guys he'd gone to bed with since his 'game' had been the same, though not to the extent that Adam had been. Mallick didn't get off on such things; he just couldn't stand watching others suffer emotionally.

It had been that way for as long as he could remember. Whenever he saw, or even imagined, another person looking emotionally distraught, something inside his chest seemed to writhe in discomfort. He remembered, when he'd been about twelve - not long after he'd gotten the nail stuck in his hand, in fact - seeing a missing cat poster plastered to a window of the candy shop he'd just walked out of, pockets full of the sweets his father had unquestioningly given him money to buy.

'Missy, lost cat,' the poster had said. 'Children are heartbroken. Please call X-number if found. $Reward$.'

Imagining the children of that lost cat, who in all likeliness was lying dead on a road somewhere, and especially the mother or father who had so carefully printed and placed the poster, and probably dozens of others, too, had made Mallick's chest scream in silent, agonized empathy. The "$Reward$" part had been the most heartbreaking. The idea that the family was willing to pay money, which by then he knew wasn't as readily available to everyone as it was to him and his parents, for something as simple as common courtesy had wrenched at his insides, forcing him to blink rapidly to stop the tears.

He remembered going home, looking up the missing cat's owner's address in the phone book, and setting off again, taking the two one-hundred dollar notes that Richard had carelessly handed him the day before when he'd told him he wanted a new video game; apparently his dad, who knew as much about video games as Mallick did about law, hadn't realized that the things didn't even run for a quarter of that price, though Mallick, of course, hadn't argued with him.

He'd knocked on the door of a rundown, two-bedroom flat, and a tired-looking woman in her mid-thirties had answered. After he'd asked her if she was the one looking for the missing cat, and the woman, becoming hopeful, had answered yes, he'd thrust the two bills into her hand and run, ignoring her astonished, bewildered calls for him to come back. He hadn't stopped running until he'd gotten three blocks away, by which time his heart felt more like it was trying to jump out of his chest than break.

It occurred to him later that the woman, and her kids, if she'd told them, probably would've thought that he had killed the cat, run over it on his bike, or something, and that his parents had told him to bring the money to its owner as compensation. Not that it had bothered him. He hadn't given the woman the money to be a hero. He'd done it to try to ease the pain and guilt in his stupid, sensitive chest. In fact, if she thought that he'd killed her cat, she could stop worrying about it and be angry with him, instead, which would be much less painful.

Mallick hated being so empathetic. It was especially painful when you had such a rich father who barely donated ten-thousand a year to charity, and then only to write it off as a tax deduction, but who gladly spoiled you rotten. Mallick could take chunks of his father's money and donate them to charity, of course. He'd even done that in small bundles when he'd been younger. But Richard wasn't stupid. He knew his son was 'over-sentimental.'

Everything he'd bought for Mallick that cost over a thousand dollars, including his car and luxury apartment, was jointly titled. Mallick couldn't sell off any of it. He also paid his son's utilities himself, rather than give him the money for it. Just about everything else was via credit card, and Mallick had no doubt that his father would cut him off if he suddenly noticed large amounts of money being taken out of his account and disappearing into various charities. Mallick was no more able to take his dad's money and give it away to all the people he wanted to help than he'd been able to help his fellow victims in their 'tests.' It sucked, but it was the way things were.

Mallick sometimes half-wished he'd been born a psychopath, or at least less sensitive, just so he didn't have to feel so bad about other people's distress. If he had, he wouldn't have been driving a wasted young man to his likely-rundown home with plans to fuck him later on, if he let him. Of course, the fact that Adam was so disgustingly attractive contributed to the situation, too, but that was beside the point.

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Ugh. More past-participle-rape near the end. Sorry about that. I think I'm mostly done with that now, though. I know I made Mallick appear very spoiled, but I figure that's how he'd be with such a rich father and all. He does eventually discard all the money, though (I won't give how, since it's a major plot point), so try not to dislike him too much. ^.^ There'll be a sex-scene in either the next chapter or the one after that. That's all we all care about, isn't it? We're such perverts. XD

'Richard' is my dad's name, BTW. He's not like Mallick's dad is here, though (which is kind of a shame, since then I'd be rich XD). I was just too lazy to think of a name myself. :3


	3. Chapter 3

Yay! Thanks for all the reviews, guys! I know Adam/Mallick isn't as popular or awesome as Adam/Lawrence, but I really do love this pairing. I mean, they just have so much in common, and they're both so CUTE! ^_^

Oh, and even though this fic is rated M, I should warn that this chapter is pretty graphic. No, Adam and Mallick don't have sex yet (damn it XD), but Adam does, uh... relieve himself quite generously near the end of the chapter. ;) Enjoy!

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Mallick knew he wasn't going to be able to fuck Adam today, of course. By the time they got to Adam's apartment, which was only a step up from the home of that missing cat's owner he'd 'helped' all those years ago in terms of quality, Adam was barely conscious. He didn't mind waiting, though. He'd had to take some of his former targets of interest, mostly the girls, out on first, second, and sometimes even third dates before they let him get inside their pants. Besides, all the thinking he'd been doing on the drive back had stifled any horniness he'd felt upon seeing the younger man, at least for the time being.

Adam stirred when Mallick slowed down and parked the car, his head thumping slightly against the side of the door. Mallick put on the hand-break and undid his seatbelt. He then opened his door and stepped out of the car, closing the door behind him. Adam attempted to imitate the other man, but his fingers didn't seem able to release the catch on the seatbelt, and God, he was so _dizzy_...

Mallick came around to Adam's side, opened the door, and leant down to undo the ex photographer's seatbelt. Once it was off, he gently plucked Adam out of the car by gripping him under the right arm and tugging. Adam winced slightly from being touched so close to his scarred shoulder, but he allowed his companion to pull him out and door and lean his unsteady body slightly against his. He was probably still too drunk to walk himself without overbalancing, after all.

Mallick, after taking a moment to lock his car with a button on his key pad, guided his burden to the rundown, cheap-looking apartment complex, but stopped when he realized he didn't know which of the dozen flats was Adam's. He hoped he wouldn't be too wasted to remember.

"Which one's yours? Do you remember?" Mallick asked gently, side-glancing at the younger man and struggling not to drop him, as he was taking almost all of his weight now.

"Uh..." Adam hesitated, thinking hard. His vision was blurry, and his brain felt like it was filled with cotton balls. "F-Four. It's... over there."

He gestured vaguely with his left hand, nearly overbalancing himself and his supporter as he did so. Mallick, managing to steady them both, followed the direction of Adam's hand and found a door marked _four_ at least a good five meters of where the guy was indicating. He couldn't really blame him for that, of course. Not many people had a good sense of direction when they were drunk.

Mallick walked, still supporting Adan, over to the door. He was silently thankful that these apartments were entered from outdoors, rather than via an indoor hallway like most were. He had a feeling Adam would've had a harder time pointing out his apartment if he wasn't out in the fresh air.

Once they reached his door and Adam realized they were there, the latter of which took a few seconds longer than it should have, Adam extricated himself clumsily from Mallick, leaning heavily against the wall beside his door instead, and grabbed his keys from his pocket. He then straightened up, still holding the wall with his left hand for balance, and began fumbling with the lock. Unfortunately, he had about as much success with this as he had with undoing his own seatbelt, and after a few embarrassing seconds, Mallick took the keys from his hand and unlocked the door for him.

"Thanks..." Adam muttered, not sure if he meant it or not. He took the keys back from Mallick, turned, then stumbled drunkenly through his open door. Once he was inside his crappy apartment, he turned back to face his escorter, leaning against a wall again to support himself. Mallick stayed in the hallway, a slight smile on his face.

There was a short, awkward silence, then Adam said:

"I'd... I'd invite you in, but..."

_I know that's what you wanted, and I'm not playing into it. I don't care how fucking lonely I am. I'm not submitting myself to some rich brat who came onto me in a _bar_._

Adam shook his head slightly, surprised that he had been able to think such a coherent, emotional thought in his current state. It annoyed him, too. Wasn't the whole point of drinking to get rid of coherent and emotional thoughts?

"I-I'm pretty... wasted," he settled for saying instead. Mallick kept smiling. It was a friendly, appealing look, but Adam was too annoyed and drunk to really notice.

"Yeah, I know," the older man said, shuffling his feet slightly. "It's okay. But, hey..."

Adam tensed inwardly. _Here it comes,_ he thought dreadingly, or as dreadingly as he could in at that moment, anyway. _This is where he asks if he can get a quick fuck for his trouble, even if I _am_ too trashed to respond much. Hell, maybe he prefers it that way._

"I don't know if... maybe... you'd wanna go and get a bite to eat tomorrow? For lunch?" Mallick elaborated, flushing slightly.

Adam blinked. Well, he hadn't been expecting that. Maybe this guy was a little classier than he'd thought.

"I'll pay," Mallick added quickly, as though Adam had already objected. "It's just..."

_You want to fuck me._

Adam's mind went into a haze again, and he found himself struggling to form an intelligible response. Well, more than he'd already been, at least.

"I-I... I don't have any money," he slurred. Mallick suppressed an urge to laugh. People's IQs really did go down immensely when they were drunk.

"I said I'd pay."

"Oh... Right." Adam responded, leaning more heavily against his wall. God, he was so drunk... He just wanted to lie down, sleep, and forget about all this, aside from writing himself a firm note to never, ever drink this much again, no matter how depressed he was. But he couldn't find the right words in his cotton-filled brain to express this, so, instead, he mumbled:

"Okay. I-I guess..."

_Why are you leading him on?_ some deeply-buried rational voice demanded, exasperated. _You know he only wants to take you out because he wants inside your pants, and unless you want to let him in there, you're taking advantage by accepting this offer._

_Well, maybe he deserves it,_ Adam answered his voice silently, though not quite as intelligibly as he liked to pretend. _He clearly has a rich dad that probably spoils him stupid, and he's sleazy enough to come onto strangers in bars. Besides, he never said he wanted to fuck me. Maybe he just wants to take me out because he's a nice guy._

Adam doubted that last part, but he didn't care. If this Mallick - what kind of name was that, anyway? A rich brat's name, that was what - wanted to try picking up random guys in bars, he'd have to face whatever consequences that arose from it.

Besides, he hadn't spoken to Lawrence in... Fuck, how many weeks had it been? He couldn't remember. That was why he'd gone to drink in the first place, though. And, even if he wasn't lonely enough to let some guy who'd sought him out in a bar fuck him, he was, or _thought_ he was, lonely enough to let some guy who'd sought him out in a bar take him out to lunch and pay for it.

"I guess," Adam said again, confirming. "Pick me up at... uh..."

"11:30?" Mallick offered, his smile widening. Adam shrugged. At this point, he wasn't quite sure what '11:30' was, but it sounded okay.

"Yeah. That."

Mallick nodded happily, then stepped back so he was no longer in Adam's doorway.

"Okay. I'll see you then. Thanks, Adam."

Adam made a slurred response that could've meant anything from 'you're welcome' to 'fuck you' and pushed his door closed, unintentionally slamming it. He then snibbed the lock, grateful that he didn't have to fumble with his key again, and stumbled down his hallway without waiting to hear Mallick leave.

He forced himself to drink two big, full glasses of water from his kitchen sink, since the more water you had while drunk, the less likely you were to get a hangover the next day, then, stopping to make sure the taps were turned off properly, made his way unsteadily down to his bedroom. Once there, he collapsed fully-clothed on his messy, unmade bed, not even bothering to pull the thin sheets up over himself for warmth, and was asleep - or passed out, more accurately - within one minute.

Adam woke up around 10:30 the next day, his head pounding and his body stiff. He would've kept sleeping, since he still felt groggy as shit even after such a long sleep, but when he tried to lie back down and settle to sleep again, a fuzzy recollection of the night before filled his mind. Adam didn't exactly take his alcohol well, but he wasn't prone to blackouts or memory loss when he drank, either. He remembered what had happened last night pretty well, with the exception of a few things he had thought and said. He remembered that he had promised Mallick he would go out to lunch with him at... 11:30, and thus only had an hour to get ready for said outing. He remembered he'd accepted the offer because he had been, and still was, missing Lawrence like crazy, to the point where he was starting to consider calling him again, even though he didn't like doing so too often in case he bothered him.

Holding his head in his left hand, Adam wearily got out of bed, not bothering to tidy it once he was out, and staggered down the hall to his tiny bathroom. It was the cleanest room in the house. After he had been rescued from his experience of hell on earth, he had immediately given his thirty days' notice to his landlord - luckily, he had only had a month-to-month lease - and found a new apartment on the other side of town. Since he had been sedated and kidnapped from his old one, and almost died shortly after, Adam hadn't wanted anything to do with the place anymore.

He kept his new bathroom near-spotless, unlike the rest of the apartment, because, if it got too grimy and unclean, it might begin to resemble that... _other_ one. He also never shut the bathroom door, even though the steam often leaked out when he showered and caused the smoke-detector in his hallway to go off.

After relieving himself, which took a while because of all the beer and water he'd consumed the night before, the ex photographer pulled off his clothes and shoes, being careful as always with getting his right shoulder out of his shirt so it wouldn't send jolts of pain all up his arm, and turned turned on the fan, which filled the room with a semi-comforting whirling buzz. He then stepped into the shower, turning on the water and making it very hot, just the way he liked it. Once he'd done that, Adam lowered himself into a sitting position, stretching out his legs as much as he could and leaning his back up against one of the shower walls, sighing in comfort as the hot water eased his sore, tense muscles.

Normally, these times were occasion for his highlight of the day, unless he happened to be seeing Lawrence later, of course. Today was no exception. The water was already making him flush, and his cock was quickly starting to harden.

Gritting his teeth, Adam carefully cupped both hands around his erecting cock, groaning softly as this sent ripples of pleasure and anticipation to form around his abdomen. Fucking women was all well and good, of course, but since his ordeal, Adam hadn't felt the desire to get that close to others, even if the closeness was just literal and caused from drunken horniness, with no chance that the woman would come looking for him later and demand a committed relationship.

Adam had somewhat admitted to himself shortly after moving into this apartment that the only person he wanted in that way was Lawrence, and that, of course, was never going to happen. The guy was married, after all, and, even if he divorced Alison, the younger man didn't get the impression that his friend was gay.

Adam wrapped his right hand around the lower part of his cock and began stroking the tip of his shaft with his left, hissing slightly and squeezing his eyes shut. He sped up quickly as his member erected more under his touch, rocking gently back and forth against the shower wall as the steaming water continued to pour down on him.

Adam then took his left hand from his throbbing length and moved it down, under and between his legs, instead. Without any hesitation or apprehension, unlike the _first_ time he had tried this, the young man roughly pushed two fingers into his opening, getting them all the way in and up against his prostate with the ease of prolonged practice. He whimpered, his back arching as a tiny spasm ran through his body, and pushed his feet hard up against the opposite side of the shower wall. It was a wonder the glass hadn't broken by now.

Running his fingers carefully along the sensitive organ inside his anus, a sensation that made his body feel light and alienated, Adam went back to his hand-job, one-handed now, making sure not to move his right hand too fast or too much in case it caused his bad shoulder to lock up on him. The good thing about having the shower so hot was that it was quite soothing to the damaged muscles and nerves there, though. Hot water was supposed to be a good recommendation for such things, after all.

As he always did in these situations, Adam pictured Lawrence behind his closed eyelids, imagining that kind, comforting smile the surgeon always had around him, then twisting the image a little so that the blond was grinning down at him, his face strained with lust and pre-climax, as he milked and jerked off the smaller man. _Oh, God, yes..._

Adam sped up the hand-job, forgetting all about the care he was supposed to be taking with his right shoulder, running his hand up, down, and around his purring cock so fast that his hand was probably a blur. At the same time, he forced a third finger into his ass, something he didn't do very often, and began moving it, along with the other two already in there, up and down, in and out as fast as he could without dislocating his hand, still rocking his body as he did so, though moving more vertically than horizontally now.

Adam was making no effort to hold back the moans and whimpers emitting from his mouth now, not that he really had been to begin with, and his body was shuddering and convulsing uncontrollably under his touch, almost like he were being electrocuted the way he had been in that bathroom. Pre-cum leaked from his cock and anus, and sweat poured from his glands, endorsed further by the burning water raining down on him from above. Adam half-screamed as his body began to be pushed over the edge. He was getting close, closer, _so close_...

"U-Ugggh..."

A brief second before he came, Lawrence's face, which had never once left Adam's mind, dissolved and was replaced by another: a young, slightly-built man with messy, gold-brown hair, pale skin, and piercing bluish green eyes. His naturally-aggressive and paranoid face was relaxed into a warm, open smile, one which Adam, though he would never admit it, found strangely comforting.

In a split-second, though, Mallick's face melted away, too, replacing the panting man's mind with a buzzing kind of emptiness as he orgasmed, his cock spilling what felt like everything from inside his abdomen down into his trembling hand, and the fingers he had buried in his anus becoming soaked with prostate fluids.

_Jesus Christ..._

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'Jesus Christ' is right, Adam. I'm so going to Hell when I die. XD Anyway, reviews are, as always, much appreciated! :)


	4. Chapter 4

Yay! Thanks for the reviews, everyone. Keep 'em coming! :) This chapter is quite long. Adam and Mallick dialogue is just so easy for me to write, and just about all they do in this chapter is talk (yeah, still no fucking yet, the stubborn bastards XD). I couldn't seem to find a good cut-off point, so the chapter's end may seem a bit abrupt. Sorry about that.

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Adam was on his couch, watching TV and dressed in one of his better sets of shirts and shorts, when the knock came at the door. He glanced at the clock on his wall and saw that it read 11:35. Either his clock was a bit fast or else Mallick had purposely gone out of his way to try not to appear too eager. He didn't really care which.

Adam got up, turned off the TV, and walked over to his door. He still felt a bit lightheaded from his little session in the shower, since it had been one of the most passionate he'd had in quite a while, and he hoped that didn't show on his face at all.

Adam hadn't forgotten than he'd thought of Mallick, however briefly, while he had been jerking off, but he didn't really give much thought to that. He hadn't been very rational at the time, and he'd certainly pictured a lot of faces during climaxes, even if he didn't have any desire to fuck them. His boss, for example, or his old math teacher. It didn't mean anything. Lawrence was the only one he wanted, at least for the time being.

Adam unlocked and pulled open his door in a would-be careless movement, bracing himself for what he would see behind it. It wasn't as bad as he'd been expecting, though. Mallick was wearing a long-sleeved, thicker-than-average shirt, despite that day's weather forecast being in the high eighties. Adam had no idea why the guy would want to subject himself to wearing something like that in such heat, especially since he, like himself, was wearing shorts. Maybe the older man had been taught that it was bad to expose your bare arms in public, or something.

Mallick was smiling at Adam in that friendly, open way he remembered from the previous night, but there was a hint of surprise in his expression, too. Adam, having realized how bad he must have looked last night, thought he knew what was surprising his visitor.

"Didn't expect me to be up, did you?" he asked, only half-sarcastically. Mallick started, flushing slightly.

"N-No, I did," he said quickly, not looking Adam directly in the eye. "I just... I mean... I didn't expect you to look so... not-hungover."

"Are you disappointed?" Adam quipped, though he didn't sound as malicious as he'd intended. Mallick shook his head, his smile widening.

"No. People who are hungover aren't really any fun to talk to." _Or fuck._ "Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah."

Mallick stepped back as Adam walked through his open door and made sure to lock it securely behind him. He didn't own a lot of valuables, but he had no real desire to lose what he had if someone did get desperate enough to burgle his house. He and Mallick walked down Adam's uneven, shared driveway, though for once the ex photographer was grateful that he didn't have his own driveway, as it made it impossible for his companion to know which of the crappy, dirty cars was really his. Not that he particularly cared what anyone thought, but still.

Mallick's silver, _very_ expensive-looking Mercedes was parked in the street just outside Adam's string of apartments, and, now that he wasn't drunk, Adam could tell that the car was worth about fifty of his at the very least. It was his dad's, if Mallick had been telling the truth last night, but Adam wasn't completely sure he had been. He didn't much care, though. This guy was going to buy him a free lunch and provide him with some decent sort of company for an hour or two. Though he didn't often get the chance to be so, Adam generally preferred being out in the open with another person than shut up in his apartment all by himself. Before Jigsaw, his preferences had been reversed, but there was nothing he could do about that.

Mallick unlocked his car doors with his keypad and opened the driver's side door. Even though he had spent barely a minute away and had had it within his sights the entire time, the older man had evidentially thought that the risk of someone trying to steal his car had been too big to take. That was probably a sensible paranoia, though. Adam did live in a pretty shitty neighborhood.

Adam stepped around to the passenger's door and opened it, and he and Mallick got into the silver automobile and did up their seat belts. Mallick rolled down both the front windows - with only the push of a button, of course, not manually like Adam had to in his car - in an attempt to let in the slight breeze that was blowing in the discomforting heat, put the keys in the ignition, and started up the engine. And, just like that, they were off. Mallick obviously didn't fuck around.

"Where are we going?" Adam asked after a short silence. He wasn't sure if Mallick was the type of person who liked talking while he drove, but what the hell. He had taken that risk by asking Adam to lunch, hadn't he?

Mallick, though, wasn't fazed. He smiled again - didn't his cheeks get sore from the amount of times he forced them up? - and side-glanced at Adam, keeping his full attention on the road.

"There's this pretty good Japanese restaurant in town, only about ten minutes away. You... You like Japanese, don't you?"

Adam nodded indifferently, staring out his open window in an attempt to avoid looking at Mallick. But that was no good; he could see the guy quite well in the side-mirror. He went on staring for a few seconds, though he made an effort to appear to be looking at the passing scenery, instead. Now that he was sober, Adam could see, or sense, some sure demeanor in Mallick's face that he couldn't place, but which felt familiar. And comforting. He dropped that thought straight away, though. Aside from getting him out of his house and potentially making him half-forget about what had happened to him two years ago, Mallick wasn't comforting. At all.

The sound of semi-loud music suddenly made Adam jump. Abrupt noises and he did not really get along.

"Sorry," Mallick said sheepishly, turning down the volume on the iPod he had placed in his CD-holder. "I didn't remember having it so loud. We don't have to play music if you don't want to, but I just thought..." _It would make things less awkward, since we're not really talking much._

"It's fine," Adam said, still staring fixedly out his window. He tried not to look at Mallick in the side-mirror, but even when he was focusing on the passing houses, people, trees, and other boring crap, it was impossible not to see the older man in the corner of his eye. Him and his not-at-all-comforting demeanor...

"So what do you like, Adam?"

Adam blinked, startled out of his thoughts, and turned back to look at his companion directly.

"Um... Like, TV?" Adam asked uncertainly.

"Anything."

Adam thought for a moment. Did he even have interests anymore? Not to the extent that he once had, but he didn't just sit around in his apartment all day and stare at the wall. He had work, he talked to and saw Lawrence occasionally, sometimes he went to a bar, though he wouldn't be doing _that_ again any time soon. But he didn't really _like_ work or drinking. He liked seeing Lawrence - actually, he loved it - but he wasn't about to tell Mallick that. What else did he do? Did TV and the Internet count? He didn't really _like_ those things; they just passed the time. He didn't mind some cop shows, and he wasn't too against supernatural stuff, either.

"Well, I like drama stuff a bit," Adam said at last. He wasn't going to name any shows unless he was asked. He didn't want to sound too eager to talk about himself. He thought of something else, then added: "As long as it's not too gory."

Nothing could _ever_ be gory. Not anymore.

"Sometimes sports," he went on. He found he didn't mind looking directly at Mallick as long as he wasn't looking right back at him, and, since the guy was concentrating on the road, that was a pretty safe gamble.

Adam had liked watching sports quite a bit before his abduction. Sports, heavy metal, and photography had been his three passions. He'd even been a guitar-player in a - very crappy - band back in high school. He had left the band at some point, though. He couldn't remember why. He'd probably just been unwilling to put in the hours of practice; he'd preferred listening to others play. He'd still stayed friends with the guys in the band, though. His best friend, Rick Verne, whom he'd known since late elementary days, had been a good friend of his right up until a couple of years ago.

Unlike Adam, Rick had stuck with his music, replacing the less motivated members of the band as they left. Last Adam had seen him, Rick had been making a pretty decent living with his music. In fact, Adam had been handing out fliers around his apartment for a show Rick and his band had been having the same day he'd... had _that_ done to him. He'd even unknowingly given a flier to one of John Kramer's accomplices, Amanda Young, the same person who had kidnapped him later that night.

After Adam had been rescued, Rick had come to visit him in the hospital once. He'd been the only visitor Adam had had besides his parents. It hadn't lasted long. Rick had brought his friend a CD which Adam couldn't even remember now. It had been some heavy metal group he'd liked. He'd left it at his old apartment when he'd moved because of the painful twinge in his chest he'd felt every time he looked at it.

Rick hadn't spoken to him after his visit. He was a good guy, but he just wasn't the sort of person who could support the traumatized, shell-like wreck of a person Adam knew he'd been for several months after his rescue. Few people could. He supposed he could've called up Rick after he'd recovered, but the betrayal he'd felt at a supposed friend's lack of support had been too much for Adam to really forgive. The friendship probably would've just fallen apart again before long, anyway. He'd fallen out of contact with all his other friends, too, though he hadn't had many. Even his parents didn't contact him that much. Not that they had before, either, but the bathroom incident certainly hadn't helped to renew their long-lost connection.

The worst part of it all was that Adam knew, if Kramer had still been alive, he wouldn't have approved of the way Adam was living his life at all. He didn't care what that sicko would've thought of him, but he was still terrified of him. If he'd been living his life to the fullest, appreciating every last second of it, the ex photographer knew he wouldn't go to bed every night half-expecting to wake up in another 'test.'

Kramer was dead, as were Amanda Young and Jill Tuck, two of his three known accomplices. His third accomplice, Mark Hoffman, was in jail. He had been caught by a detective, Matt Gibson - obviously a much higher rank than a detective now - just after killing Jill Tuck, who had previously tried and failed to do the same to Hoffman. Tuck, having been just as disgusting and unwilling to face the consequences of her actions as everyone else involved with Jigsaw, had made a deal with Gibson that she would identify and incriminate Hoffman if she was granted immunity and protection.

Adam had ranted about this a great deal to Lawrence. "If the cunt was really sorry," he would fume, Lawrence's calm, patient face only egging him on more, "she would've _wanted_ to go to jail for everything she did! She would've turned Hoffman in without demanding immunity! I hate Hoffman just as much as every other one of those sick fucks, but I'm _glad_ he managed to kill that piece of shit before he got caught! If he hadn't, I would've tracked her down and killed her myself!" These rants had usually ended with Adam in tears, and Lawrence leading him gently from the restaurant they had met, if they had met in one, and in to his car, where he would continue to comfort and listen to his friend until he calmed down.

Adam didn't really rant or throw tantrums anymore, and he was very happy about that. Though he knew that Lawrence didn't mind at all and would always be there for him, Adam had still felt somewhat embarrassed, crying and screaming in the arms of another man — or _anyone_, for that matter.

Hoffman had come quietly when he'd been caught, though he'd been attempting to flee the city and then country beforehand. The whole thing had been captured by an amateur camera crew, whom Gibson and his colleagues had really only let follow them because they hadn't seriously believed they would find Hoffman where they had: just outside his old hideout, which he had seconds before blown up in a huge, spectacular explosion that had lit up the immediate sky and shaken the ground for nearly a mile around. The footage had then been broadcast on just about every channel less than an hour later, making the amateur camera crew very rich, indeed.

Adam hadn't seen the footage live, which was something he seriously regretted, but the Internet existed for a reason, and he had seen the footage several times since. Gibson, whom Adam would willingly fuck and suck off if he asked him to - as would any other surviving Jigsaw victim, he was sure - had almost walked right into Hoffman as they both rounded opposite sides of the same corner of the burning hideout. Gibson, though clearly shocked, had composed himself straight away, and, a second later, had his gun right up in Hoffman's face.

Hoffman had appeared to have been considering jumping back around the corner and trying to make a lunge for the bag around his shoulder, which had no doubt held a gun, but had evidentially changed his mind a second later when he'd noticed Gibson being backed up by at least a dozen SWAT members and detectives.

"Get your fucking hands up and get down on the ground!" Gibson had screamed, finger poised on the trigger of his gun. Though, his voice had been so shrill and alarmed, his command hadn't really sounded like anything one could call 'English.' In fact, one of the most popular types of comments left on any upload of Hoffman's arrest was: "Getyourfuckinghandsup," followed up a string of nonsense letters and numbers, like "e3ergr3fd43t453t23d." Nonetheless, Hoffman had appeared to understand. Very slowly, almost morosely, the former apprentice had raised his hands above his shoulders, looking back steadily at his armed company as he'd done so.

"Get down on the ground!" Gibson had repeated, a little more comprehensible now. Hoffman had complied, and, as much as Adam, Lawrence, or any Jigsaw victim hated to admit, there had been a sort of quiet dignity in the way he had slowly gotten to his knees, then to his stomach, hands still held away from his body in surrender. Maybe it was the fact that the guy hadn't been pissing himself from having a dozen guns pointed at him, ready to go off at the slightest rash movement. Not a lot of people would've been able to keep their composure in that situation.

Gibson had then handed his gun to one of the SWAT members beside him and knelt down beside Hoffman while the others covered him. With much more force and roughness than had been necessary - not that anyone had complained - Gibson had wrenched the former detective's hands behind his back and cuffed them, and, after a quick but thorough pat-down that included literally tearing the bag strap from around the prisoner's shoulder, Gibson had hauled Hoffman to his feet and said, in an only slightly unsteady voice: "You're under arrest." And, Hoffman, much to the amusement of most, but not all, viewers of the footage, had retorted: "Really?"

The video cut off at that point, presumably because one of the less occupied SWAT members had forced the camera crew to stop filming, but the footage that they had managed to get had been more than enough.

Hoffman hadn't even bothered fighting his case. He'd merely plead guilty on every last charge brought against him, not even caring if they were all true or not. "I'm going to jail for life either way," he'd said, in one of the few pieces of footage filmed of his many trials. "What's the point of trying to defend any of the charges?" It was lucky for Hoffman that the State he had chosen to murder people in didn't have the death penalty. If it had, the bastard probably would've just provoked Gibson into shooting him when he'd been cornered.

Knowing Hoffman would be sitting in a 23-hour-a-day cell for the rest of his life wasn't quite as satisfying as seeing him getting a lethal injection would've been, but it was enough. John Kramer, Amanda Young, and Jill Tuck were all dead - mostly thanks to Hoffman, ironically enough - and Hoffman was locked up; Adam, Lawrence, and every other surviving Jigsaw victim were finally able to live their 'reformed' lives with some resemblance of peace and normality.

That didn't stop Adam from being scared, though. There could always be a fourth accomplice, or a copycat killer. There _were_ sick fucks out there who had admired Kramer's 'work,' after all.

"Adam?"

Mallick was looking with concern at the younger man, though his main attention was still wisely focused on the road. Adam shook his head slightly, realizing he'd been silent for a good thirty seconds, and tried to remember what they'd been talking about.

"Yeah, I like sports," Adam said, as though there had been no pause, "but mostly just so I can see everyone beating the shit out of each other."

Mallick's concerned look melted away, and he laughed evenly. He had a nice laugh.

"What about wrestling?" he asked when he'd stopped chuckling. Adam frowned. He hated wrestling. Always had. At least _that_ hadn't changed.

"No. If I wanted to watch some gay porn, I'd just go on the Internet."

Adam regretted that 'joke' even before he'd finished it. It would've worked with his old friends, like Rick, but with Mallick, the guy who, Adam was fairly sure, was romantically interested in him, it had been a stupid thing to say. Especially since Adam _did_ sometimes look up gay porn on the Internet...

"I also like photography," Adam went on quickly. Actually, his interest in taking photos had dropped quite a bit, too, but it had probably suffered the least out of all his hobbies. Not that that was saying much.

"Oh, really?" Mallick stopped at a red light, the first one they'd encountered so far, and turned to look at Adam properly, clearly interested. Adam quickly averted his gaze to the windscreen.

"Yeah. Is that a problem?" he muttered, somewhat defensive.

"No, not at all," Mallick replied, turning back to face the windscreen himself, though whether he was doing it to make his companion more comfortable or if he was just making sure he was ready when the light changed, Adam didn't know. Or care. "You just... don't seem like the type."

The younger man grunted. Mallick wasn't the only person who thought that. His father, for example...

"What do you like?" Adam asked, not because he was interested, but because he didn't want to talk about himself anymore. He'd already said enough.

Mallick hesitated, relieved when the light changed back to green and he was able to put his foot on the accelerator and get a good breeze to blow through the windows again. What did he like? Sex and light drugs didn't count, did they? Especially since he'd been doing those things far less than he had been before... _that_.

"I like tennis," Mallick said, after searching his brain furiously for several seconds.

_Had_ liked, anyway. Ever since his Jigsaw ordeal, he hadn't so much as looked at a tennis racket, let alone picked one up. When he wasn't fucking, smoking stuff, or doing anything related to those two things, he was mostly just sitting or lying around his luxury apartment, watching TV or browsing the Internet without really paying attention to either. He kept thinking for a moment, knowing he hadn't given enough information in comparison to Adam. He caught on something, then smiled, somewhat sheepishly.

"I do like grammar."

"Grammar?" Adam repeated, not understanding. Mallick nodded.

"Yeah. Like, English grammar. I like studying how it works and getting into arguments with people about it."

At least, he _had_. Not so much anymore. Ever since he'd been around fifteen, Mallick had become a regular grammar Nazi, as they were often called now. He'd corrected any mistakes his friends had made in speaking or writing with such annoying consistency and nerdiness that Mallick was sure he wouldn't have been as popular as he had been in high school if he hadn't had such a wealthy father.

Even when he had gotten high or drunk, Mallick had usually still been able to pick out other people's grammar mistakes, however slurred he sounded when doing so. The only time he ever really let things slide was with his father, who didn't make that many mistakes anyway, or during sex. It was kind of hard to focus on correct English when you were pounding or being pounded to a blissful oblivion. Mallick knew the fact that he didn't speak like a ghetto-rat or three year-old was one of the few things his father was proud of him for, or, more accurately, wasn't ashamed of him for. He didn't really get into arguments with people about grammar anymore, but he still tended to correct people the few times he actually interacted.

Adam considered this statement, looking sideways at the other man again as he did so. Mallick didn't really seem like the sort of person who cared about grammar, which meant that, whatever else, the two of them did at least share the common trait of being interested in something that others didn't think suited them: Adam with photography and Mallick with linguistics.

Then again, the guy was probably rich, and rich people generally did like everything to be 'correct' and 'higher-class.' If that got on Adam's nerves, though, he could always ditch him, and he didn't think it would. Adam may not have had anything above a high school education, and his parents may have been pretty shitty in terms of financial security and thus paying for his schooling, but he was pretty sure he spoke decent English. Well, unless the excessive use of 'fuck' and 'shit' could be counted as incorrect grammar, in which case, his English was probably pretty bad.

Lawrence corrected him sometimes, actually. Usually it was just the standard "'he and I,' not 'him and me'" correction, but Adam made that mistake so often, that was more than enough. Lawrence didn't really correct Adam because he wanted or expected him to change; he did it more as a light kind of teasing and a sort of in-joke at the fact that he made so much money and Adam didn't. If Mallick was similar to Lawrence in any way, the ex photographer considered that a good thing, even though he didn't like to admit it.

"English is a fucking weird language," Adam said after another short pause, partly to drown out the crappy rock song that was playing on Mallick's iPod, and partly because it was true.

Mallick laughed again. That fucking pleasant laugh...

"Yeah, I know," he said sympathetically. "It's because it's got a bit of everything mixed into it."

"I don't suppose 'fucking' was incorrect there?" Adam asked sarcastically, his tone making it very clear that he didn't care if it had been or not.

Another short, pleasant laugh. _Goddamn it..._

"No," he replied. "'Fucking' is an adverb modifying 'weird.' It's grammatically identical to something like 'very' there."

"Except 'very' doesn't make old women cry," Adam put in. Mallick's lips twitched, as though he'd just managed to stop himself from laughing again.

"True."

Adam thought back to the various English classes of his childhood that he'd barely ever learned anything from. He remembered a few things. His teacher had been a grumpy old bitch who had insisted that all her students speak perfect English in her class. She'd even handed out detentions if a student gave her an essay with too many grammar mistakes on it. _Adverbs... I think I remember those..._ Yes, he did. Partially, at least. If Mallick was correct, and he probably was, it seemed he hadn't taken in everything, though.

"I thought adverbs could only modify verbs?" Adam asked, now genuinely curious. He hadn't expected to be getting interested in anything Mallick said, least of all a discussion about _grammar_.

Mallick's eyes lit up, and Adam recognized his expression as that of an eager person who has just found an excuse to talk about his best subject. It was kind of cute, in a way. Lawrence donned a similar look when the subject of surgery or mystery novels came up.

"Nope," Mallick replied. "That's a common misconception, though, because of the name. Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs."

"Hmm," Adam said thoughtfully, shifting slightly in his seat. "And adjectives modify nouns, right?"

"Yup."

Well, at least he remembered _something_ from his classes. Adam thought again.

"And nouns are people, places, or things," he said, more as a statement than a question. He was fairly sure what nouns were. After all, those were usually the first part of speech people learned about.

"That's right," Mallick confirmed, still smiling at the windscreen.

"That's about the extent of my grammar knowledge," Adam sighed, playing with his seatbelt and looking out his window again. Mallick shrugged.

"Well, that's more than a lot of people know," he said kindly. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he'd given enough information about himself to ask something else of his companion. He hoped so. "So, what sort of photography do you do, Adam?"

_Hardly anything. Not anymore._

Adam shook his head, trying to banish those thoughts. He was here to try to forget those things, wasn't he?

"Anything, really. People, places, things..." Realizing what he'd said, he added, in what he hoped was a light tone: "Nouns."

Mallick grinned.

"I don't know if it's possible to take pictures of adjectives and verbs yet."

Adam laughed shortly, without meaning to. _Damn it._ He could now see how easy it was to do that sometimes, and he begrudged Mallick less for it. It was obviously much easier for him to laugh, though. He didn't have all the things on his mind that Adam did.

"That would be pretty fucked up, actually," Adam agreed, still looking out the window.

"What sort of camera do you use?"

Adam wondered for a brief moment if the older man knew anything about cameras and wanted to know his exact model and make. Then he realized what he meant.

"Traditional. I don't like digital much, and I can't figure out computers worth shit. My school was such a shit-hole that we never really learned anything about computers. The only thing I really know how to do on a computer is use the Internet."

Specifically for free soft porn, either straight or gay, though he preferred gay. As much as he hated to admit it.

"Well, that's something," Mallick said. "I know a bit about computers, but not much. They've changed a lot since we were in school."

That statement made Adam think of something else.

"How old are you?" he asked in, what he was annoyed to discover, an actual interested voice.

"35," Mallick replied evenly. "You?"

Adam was somewhat surprised. Mallick was older than he looked. If he'd had to guess by his appearance and voice, Adam probably would've placed him at around 31 or 32. His hair, face, and build didn't really give the impression that he was as old as he was. Not that it really mattered, of course, but...

Adam suddenly became aware that Mallick was looking at him curiously, and he swallowed nervously.

"I'm 29," he admitted reluctantly. He didn't know why he was hesitant about revealing that he was six years Mallick's junior. Lawrence was 42, after all. Maybe he just didn't like the idea of being taken out by a virtual stranger who was that much older than him.

Mallick didn't seem to mind, though. He nodded briefly at Adam's reveal, then went on with what he'd been saying as though there had been no interruption.

"Yeah, computers as we know them pretty much only started up in the late nineties. We could probably figure out how to get a digital camera working on your computer, though."

Adam didn't like the way Mallick so casually threw out 'we.' What made him think that he was going to let him into his house after this?

"I don't know," Adam said uncertainly. "My computer's pretty old. I got it secondhand. Besides, I prefer taking pictures the old-fashioned way."

Well, he _had_. Before his abduction, Adam had preferred developing his pictures himself in his own dark room. Though, the fact that a lot of the pictures he'd taken had been less than legal _had_ made taking his films to a professional developer a bit of an impossibility. Nowadays, though, the _very_ few pictures Adam did take, he took to a developer. He'd had no desire to move his dark room to his new apartment with everything else, considering all the guilty and traumatic memories it gave him.

"I like that," Mallick smiled. "These days, everyone's always taking pictures on their phones, anyway. The quality looks like shit. Even proper digital cameras can't capture the old awesomeness of the classic ones."

Adam had to agree there, though he didn't feel like doing so out loud.

"Is 'awesomeness' a word, Mr. Grammar Expert?" he said instead. He'd meant to sound snarky - the guy was probably a spoiled sleaze, after all - but, to his annoyance, the words came out sounding much more friendly than he'd intended. Mallick smiled in response.

"As much of a word as 'googling' and 'texting,'" he quipped.

And, for the first time since he'd last spoken to Lawrence, Adam found, if only for a few minutes, he was actually coming close to almost forgetting what had happened to him two years ago. _Almost_.

X X X X X X X X X X

Yeah, I made Mallick into a bit of a grammar Nazi. XD I liked the idea because, like Adam's photography, it seems out-of-the-ordinary for a compulsive, angry young man like him. Since we didn't learn much about Mallick in his appearances, I figured I'd have to add something. I got the idea from his line near the end of Saw V: "There are saws in here." The fact that he said that, rather than "there's saws in here" really appealed to me, since it's a mistake people make often in speech. Sure, since Mallick said "there was eight people" instead of "there were eight people" shortly after, it makes his earlier line a bit less impressive, but I still like the idea. :) And yes, I couldn't bear the idea of killing Hoffman off, so I just had to mention that he survives, even if he has to spend the rest of his life in prison. ;)

Expect some adorable angst (and possibly hurt and comfort, depending on how long the first parts take to write) in the next chapter! I know it's taking these two stubborn guys a long time to just let go of their pride and fuck, but I did want to make the fic a bit realistic. XD


	5. Chapter 5

Once again, thanks to everyone who's R&R'd this fic! Inspiration for this one seems to be coming hard and fast (like Adam and Mallick soon will be... Wow, I'm immature XD), which I'm really happy about. :) Anyway, this chapter is also quite long, mostly because I couldn't really cut anything out or cut off at any point, so be sure to make yourselves comfortable! ;)

X X X X X X X X X X

Mallick drove the car in silence for a minute or so while Adam, half-listening to the blaring iPod, looked out the window. A song he didn't know the name or writers of ended, and, after a brief pause, the next one started up. Unlike the previous ones, though, this one actually sounded familiar. Adam turned back to face his companion, smiling in enthusiasm and appreciation.

"Fuck, I love this song!" he exclaimed. Mallick glanced at him, smiling, too.

"_Dead __Inside_ by _Skillet_?" he asked, sounding somewhat surprised. Adam nodded.

"Yeah. Usually I don't go for that emo shit, especially if it's Christian rock, but that song... Fuck, man."

Mallick laughed.

"Hey, don't worry," he said reassuringly. "I like it, too. That's my iPod, after all. I don't usually put songs onto it if I don't like them."

Adam didn't answer this. As one of the few people in the modern Western world who still used a Walkman over an iPod, he felt a bit embarrassed. It wasn't that he didn't like iPods; he just didn't really see the point in spending $200 or more on one when you could get a set of fifty 500-MB-storage CDs for one quarter of that price and get a lot more use out of them. Usually, he didn't care what other people thought about him, especially probably-rich brats, but even he knew that not having an iPod in this day and age was a pretty uncommon thing.

Suddenly, without warning, Mallick began singing along with the song in a slightly off-key and satirical, but still bearable, voice. Adam started from the sudden sound.

"Dead inside- My heart and soul flatline-"

After looking at Mallick in partial amusement for a few seconds, Adam joined in. Normally, he didn't like singing in front of other people, but something about Mallick's openness made him want to sing too, if only to save the guy from feeling too awkward. Besides, he really did love the song.

"Put your mouth on mine- And bring me back to li-i-i-fe-"

Adam didn't put real effort into his singing, making it somewhat self-mocking like Mallick's. He must have been doing a worse job than his companion, though, because, after another couple of seconds, Mallick raised his voice and pitch to the point where he almost sounded like he'd never hit puberty, in order to compete with his companion. Adam, determined not to be beaten, upped his own efforts, or lack thereof, to sound bad, until the original song could barely be heard over the sound of their increasingly rising voices.

When the song ended, what seemed like much more quickly than Adam remembered when he listened to it alone, Adam was in near hysterics of laughter, and Mallick, concentrating on keeping half his attention fixed on driving, was chuckling softly. No sooner had they started to catch their breaths, though, did the next song, _Full __Moon_ by _Sonata __Arctica_, start up, and Adam, discomfort completely forgotten at this point, said excitedly:

"Holy-shit! I know this one, too! _Full __Moon_!"

"Jesus Christ! What're the odds?" Mallick said, grinning. "Wanna sing to this one, too?"

"Bet your ass!" Adam replied happily.

Adam and Mallick broke into another near-tone-deaf duet, Adam rocking slightly while Mallick tapped his left index finger on the steering wheel. They caught several annoyed glimpses from some drivers on the other lanes, their voices clearly being heard through the open windows, but neither of them cared. Adam, for the first time since his incident with someone who wasn't Lawrence, and Mallick, for the first time since his incident period, were genuinely enjoying themselves.

By the time they reached the restaurant, Adam had been able to sing along with four of the five new songs they'd gone through on Mallick's iPod, including _Dead__Inside_, and the one he hadn't been able to sing along with, the fourth, hadn't bothered him because it had been in Italian, and listening to Mallick's half-sarcastic, half-serious attempts to sing in Italian had been so enjoyable, the ex photographer had found himself laughing even harder than before.

It seemed Adam and Mallick had pretty similar taste in music.

They managed to get a park right outside the restaurant, a very lucky and impressive feat considering how busy the city was on Saturdays. The two of them undid their seat belts and stepped out of the car, still laughing slightly from their experience. As they began walking towards the front doors of the restaurant, Mallick put on a mock-serious expression.

"Okay, it's official. We're obviously long-lost twins who were separated at birth."

Adam laughed again. God, his lungs were beginning to ache...

"How the fuck can we be twins when you're six years older than me?" he asked, pretending to be bemused. Mallick reached the restaurant door before he did and held it open chivalrously for the younger man.

"Hey, my forte is grammar, not math," he said as they both stepped through the doors. "Speaking of which, you should've said: 'You're six years older than I.'"

"Fuck you," Adam responded promptly. There was no malice in his words, though; he was still grinning. Mallick chortled.

The restaurant wasn't by any means fancy or 'posh' like Adam had half-expected. It was a well-lit, slightly cozy Japanese place called Sushi Supreme. No waiter greeted them or showed them to a table, which gave one the impression that the setting was quite casual. Mallick led Adam to a small table close to the doors, and they sat down opposite each other on hard, wooden chairs.

Eventually a waitress walked over to their table and handed them a menu each, then walked off again with a promise to return in a few minutes to take their orders. Adam opened his menu and looked at the wide selection of Japanese cuisine, feeling slightly overwhelmed by all the unfamiliar dishes and foreign names.

"I... I really don't know what to get," he said, after staring hopelessly at the available dishes for a few moments. "I haven't gotten Japanese in..."

He couldn't even remember the last time. It had certainly been before... _that_, and such times seemed a million years past at this point.

"I can recommend some stuff for you," Mallick offered, smiling at Adam helpfully.

Adam glanced at him over his menu, flushed at the open smile aimed at him, and gulped. God, this almost felt like a _date_. Certainly, you weren't supposed to be so nervous and awkward when you were dining with just a _friend_. Then again, maybe you were. The only person he'd gone to restaurants with since his ordeal was Lawrence, and there was no awkwardness between them.

"I'll just get what you get," Adam muttered shortly, putting down his menu so that he wouldn't have to look at the confusing words anymore.

Mallick nodded, still smiling, and put down his menu, too.

"Okay, I know what I want. What do you want to drink? Beer?"

Adam shuddered inwardly, his head pounding uncomfortably in memory of his unpleasant night and morning.

"I'm not going to be drinking again for quite a while," he said solemnly. Mallick laughed.

"That's probably a good idea. Well, what do you like? Coke?"

Adam, despite himself, chuckled lightly.

"Who doesn't like coke?" he asked, only half-sarcastically. Really, who _didn't_ like coke? Mallick shrugged.

"My dad never really liked it. He said it tastes like concentrated piss."

"How does he know what piss tastes like?" Adam asked, and they laughed again, though in a more subdued way than they had while in the car or outside the restaurant.

The waitress returned shortly after, a small notepad and pen in her hand and an inquisitive look on her face. Mallick gave her a friendly smile.

"Hi," he said pleasantly. "We'll have a large jug of coke, two sets of takoyaki with extra dipping sauce, and two chicken katsu bentos, please."

The waitress nodded, jotting down the order and its total with ease from obvious endless hours of practice.

"That'll be... $52.50," she said, looking up from her notepad. Mallick nodded, reached into his wallet, which was much more casual- and less snobby-looking than Adam had pictured, and handed the waitress one fifty dollar note and one twenty.

"Don't worry about the change," he said, still smiling, then mentally kicked himself. Jesus, _why_ had he said that? He usually made a habit of tipping waiters generously, since he could afford to and they got lousy wages, but as a rule he didn't like doing it in front of people he didn't really know. He knew it made him look like a snotty, spoiled brat, especially to Adam, who he was pretty sure already thought of him somewhat like that.

The waitress looked at the bills in stunned delight for a moment, then managed to control her expression.

"Th-Thank you, sir. Your food will be about ten minutes," she said soberly. Mallick thanked her, staring down at the table in front of him as she left. Then, still not looking up, he blurted:

"I-I'm not trying to show off, or anything. Waiters just get really shitty wages, and I can afford to pay them a bit more, so..."

He broke off, digging the nails of his _good_ hand into the top of the table, fearing that, if he looked up, he would see a look of mingled dislike and jealousy on his new friend's face.

Of course, paying a waitress a few extra bucks wasn't the greatest thing Mallick could have been doing with his dad's money, but, if he tried to do too much, Richard would get suspicious and cut him off, and he didn't want that, even though he hated being supported by his father.

Adam shrugged. He wanted to ask Mallick what he did for a living, but he had a horrible feeling he knew the guy didn't do anything but live off his obviously wealthy father. He thought he'd walk out of the restaurant in disgust if his suspicions were confirmed, though.

Adam looked at Mallick's hands, still on the table's top. He noticed something strange about Mallick's right hand, and, though he normally didn't like to stare at other people, or their body parts, for too long, the guy wasn't looking at him, so he made an exception.

There was a huge, noticeable scar that started from between the man's ring and middle fingers, continued straight down the hand and wrist, then went on along the arm past the long sleeves he was wearing. There were stitches all throughout the scar, too, which made it obvious that the wound was somewhat recent. Damn, what had the guy done to himself? Adam suddenly felt more curious than anxious to hide the fact that he'd been staring.

"Is your hand okay? What happened?"

To his irritation, the words came out sounding more concerned and tentative than he'd intended. Mallick looked up sharply, then quickly pulled his hands from the table top and resettled them in his lap.

"Oh..." he said, looking as though Adam had just asked him something extremely personal. "Just..." Adam scolded himself inwardly. He hadn't meant to embarrass him.

"Hey, it's okay, man," he said, in what he hoped was an understanding and uninterested voice. "You don't have to tell me. It's none of my business, actually." There was a short, awkward pause, then he added, almost humbly: "Sorry."

He considered, for the briefest of moments, bringing up his own arm-injury - _Hey, __fucked __up __right __arms __is _another _thing __me __and __this __guy __have __in __common,_ Adam thought humorlessly - but quickly decided against it. That was personal, after all. Much more personal than whatever Mallick had done to screw up his right hand. He'd probably injured it in some rich-guy-related activity, like sky-diving or water-skiing. Nothing like what Adam had gone through.

Mallick smiled gently and shook his head to show that there were no hard feelings.

"It's okay. Anyone'd be curious. Maybe I'll tell you about it some other time." _Not __fucking __likely._ "It's not really a public kind of story, though."

Adam shrugged indifferently, hoping he wasn't appearing too uncaring. However un-public Mallick's tale might be, it certainly couldn't compare to Adam's. Not that Adam would ever tell Mallick his, of course.

Their meal arrived a few minutes later, brought by the same waitress who had taken their order, who gave Mallick a grateful smile as she approached. Adam wondered if their order had been bumped to the front of the line because of the generous tip his companion had given. He also wondered if that was the same reason the waitress was brining them all their food at once, since doing so was clearly a precarious position and a strain, or if she always carried customers' orders that way in order to save time.

The waitress set down a bowl of 'takoyaki' - small, round balls made of egg and batter with octopus chunks in the middle - and a bento in front of each of them, then darted away and was back barely ten seconds later with a jug of coke and two small glasses, which she placed neatly between the two diners.

"I hope you enjoy," she said, probably meaning the words a lot more than she usually did. They thanked her, and were then left alone again.

Adam looked down at his food. It looked decent, but a lot more than he was used to eating, and he sincerely doubted he'd be able to finish it all. He'd be very impressed if Mallick could, either. Mallick cheerfully speared a takoyaki with his chopstick, rather than picking it up properly, dipped it into its sauce, and popped it into his mouth whole. Adam followed his example, though he actually bothered to make use of his chopsticks. Lawrence had painstakingly taught him to use them not too long ago at a Chinese restaurant, and he was determined not to let the ten minutes they'd spent on the lesson go to waste.

The takoyaki wasn't the best thing he'd ever tasted, but it was bearable. He liked the sauce, too. It was a sort of combination of mayonnaise and soy sauce, and it complemented the egg and batter well.

Once he'd each eaten two of the four takoyaki he'd been given, Adam turned his attention to his 'bento.' He had no idea what the word meant, but he could safely assume that it was same kind of Japanese box, since that was what he was looking at. It was separated into several different compartments, each with a different kind of food. One had a beef casserole, one had chicken smothered in a dark-looking sauce of some kind, one had rice, and the last one had a combination of green salad, tofu, and vegetable spring rolls — the 'vegetarian' portion.

Adam started on the spring rolls, dipping them into the takoyaki's sauce to give them a bit of extra flavor. For a few minutes, he and Mallick continued to eat in silence, more interested in satisfying their hunger than in making conversation. But, once Mallick had emptied half his bento and Adam had emptied a third, they began to slow down, and Adam had a pretty good idea that they would start talking soon.

Feeling thirsty, Adam reached for the jug of coke with his right hand, picking it up and making to pour some into his glass. Suddenly, though, a mild but alarming jolt of pain shot up his bad shoulder, and he winced, dropping the jug back onto the table. Luckily, he'd still been holding the jug vertically when it had dropped, so all that really came of the accident was a slight _thump_ as the jug hit the table, rather than coke being spilled all over the place.

Adam drew back, cursing inwardly and subconsciously massaging his scarred shoulder with his left hand. It always had to happen at the most inconvenient of times, didn't it?

"Are you okay?" Mallick asked through a mouthful of chicken, concerned. Adam shifted uncomfortably, taking his left hand from his shoulder and using it to pour himself a drink, instead.

"Yeah," he muttered, sipping from his coke and not looking up. "Just... slipped."

Mallick knew he was lying, since it was fairly obvious to him that Adam had suffered some kind of pain in his shoulder, but he didn't press it. Adam hadn't nagged to know the story behind his injury, after all. Though, admittedly, his was much more personal. He did still wonder what the guy had done to injure his shoulder. Maybe he'd slept on it awkwardly.

At that moment, the doors to the restaurant were thrown open, and two heavily-muscled, aggressive-looking men in their late thirties strode in, talking and laughing in loud, over-confident-sounding voices. They sat down at the table closest to the two younger men, with Mallick facing them and Adam with his back to them. They continued talking loudly until the waitress brought them menus, at which point they shut up somewhat, if only to see what kind of food they could stuff themselves with.

Adam rolled his eyes at Mallick, indicating all too well that the newcomers were annoying him. Mallick would've rolled his eyes in return, but since he didn't have his back to the men like Adam did, he didn't feel like risking it. He wasn't really in the mood to get into a fight with two guys much bigger and stronger than he was, especially not in front of Adam.

"So, yeah, I think you can see where I'm coming from," one of the men - the larger, slightly more obnoxious-looking one - said to his friend, obviously continuing a conversation that had been interrupted prior to entering the restaurant. He wasn't talking as loudly now, but his voice still carried, particularly to the unfortunate pair that was stuck at the table right near his.

"Yeah, I do," his smaller friend replied, looking up from his menu and nodding. "I really do, man. I mean, I've thought the same for a while, but I don't like talking about it because it's... you know, pretty controversial, and all."

"Fuck that!" the larger man retorted, waving his menu for emphasis. "I think most people agree with us, even though they're too chicken-shit to admit it."

"Whatever they agree with, I wish they'd shut the fuck up," Adam murmured quietly to Mallick, taking another sip from his glass. Mallick winced in agreement.

"So do I," he said sympathetically, "but don't end your clauses with prepositions, Adam."

Adam chuckled in response, even though he wasn't quite sure what clauses or prepositions were. He and Mallick kept silent, continuing to discreetly listen to their overzealous neighbors.

"John Kramer and Mark Hoffman were freaking saints," the larger man said, his tone suddenly becoming very serious.

Adam and Mallick froze, their looks of mingled amusement and annoyance melting away in an instant. Had that man just said what they thought he'd said? Surely, they must have misheard...

"They got people to appreciate their lives," the larger man continued passionately, still waving his menu around like a baton. "I mean, that homeless piece of shit who begged _us_ to give him our hard-earned money on the way here; those guys got people like _that_ to stop being such lazy, waste-of-space parasites and actually _do_ something with their lives."

"Unless they failed their tests," the smaller man pointed out, smirking.

"Yeah, but if they failed their tests, at least they weren't lazing around in the streets anymore," the larger man retorted, putting down his menu so that he could better emphasize with his hands. "I mean, if you won't even cut off a finger or kill someone you don't know to save your own life, obviously you don't appreciate it. I read on the Internet that, like, 90% of Jigsaw's victims were unemployed, so, if nothing else, at least Kramer and Hoffman saved us decent American tax payers a few bucks on welfare bullshit."

Mallick felt himself slowly going cold all over, his mind filling up in a confusing, agonizing mixture of fear, hatred, and disgust. And frustration. Of all the things these idiots could've been talking about, of all the restaurants they could've chosen, of all they days they could've picked to talk about it... Why now? Why in front of Adam? He didn't want Adam to see him start screaming at, and possibly attacking, random strangers. The guy very likely already thought he was a spoiled brat, so how would he feel if he found out he was a _crazy_ spoiled brat?

"But, of course," the larger man continued, his voice rising slightly, "the fucking feds had to come along and ruin everything. If they'd just shut the fuck up and not interfered, Hoffman could've kept doing what he was doing, maybe gotten some more followers, and that missing third of our pay checks could've been going to something better than lazy, unemployed _bums_."

Mallick clenched his fists, ignoring the pain this caused his right hand, staring down at his food. He was afraid to look at Adam, afraid to let the younger man see just how angry and close to breaking he was. But he _was_ going to get up. That was inevitable. He was going to jump to his feet, storm over to those two ignorant morons a few feet away, and make them regret ever walking into this restaurant, and, if Adam thought he was a crazy spoiled brat after that, Mallick would just have to deal with it.

Before he could actually get to his feet, though, Mallick heard a loud bang in front of him as Adam slammed down his glass, pushed back his chair, and jumped to his feet. Mallick barely had time to look up and register the expression of mingled fury and loathing on his companion's face before he turned around to face the two older men.

"Excuse me? You two?" Adam said to the men in a toneless voice. They turned to face him, the smaller one spinning his chair around slightly to better see his addresser. Mallick, meanwhile, though still nothing short of furious himself, couldn't help looking at his new friend with curiosity and apprehension. Why was _he_ so angry?

"I think you should avoid talking about things you have no fucking idea about," Adam continued in that same toneless voice, looking steadily at the two men, who both easily outweighed him by a hundred pounds each. "John Kramer was a sick, deranged, hypocritical, murdering psychopath who enjoyed torturing people to death because it made him feel better about dying. He put people through Hell, things you people could never even _begin_ to imagine, and he did it because he was fucking _pissed_, not because he wanted to teach people lessons. And Hoffman was a sick, deranged, murdering psychopath with a hard-on for Kramer and a God-complex."

The two men stared back at Adam, their expressions ones of obvious bewilderment. Mallick doubted he looked much better, though. In fact, he was gaping at Adam like he'd just announced he was the Queen of England.

"The one-in-ten people who survived their fucking bullshit aren't 'cured,'" Adam went on, his clenched fists shaking slightly but his voice still perfectly calm and toneless. "Sure, they don't take their lives for granted anymore, but they _do_ live in constant fear and... and post-traumatic stress. They go to sleep every night thinking they're gonna wake up in another trap, or staring into those sickos' faces. They get angry, depressed, they get insomnia, they... _Fuck_, they get completely fucked _up_. And, believe me, that's much, _much_ worse than just taking your life for granted."

Adam stopped, breathing slightly faster than was necessary, and there was a short, heavy silence. All of the people from the surrounding tables were looking with poorly-hidden interest at the four men now, clearly hoping there would be a fight of some sort. After a moment, the larger man's bewildered look melted away and was replaced with a smug, arrogant sneer.

"Oh, yeah?" he shot back. "What the hell would you know, you little faggot?"

He smirked briefly at Mallick, his interpretation of him fairly obvious, then went on:

"What makes you think you know anything more about those two than we do?"

With alarmingly suddenness, Adam strode over to the larger man and, without any trace of fear at all, grabbed the collar of his shirt. The man looked the type who would normally throttle someone for doing such a thing, but, right then, he appeared too stunned by the ex photographer's actions to really react. Adam leaned in close so that his face was just an inch away from the other man's and said in a very, very low voice:

"Google 'Adam Faulkner Jigsaw.' Adam Faulkner is my name. Google it, read the story, and, next time you decide to talk about things you have no fucking clue about, you'd better make sure that you're nowhere near me because, if you are, I will bring you closer to understanding what those 'tests' are like than you could _ever_ believe. Got it?"

Before the man could reply, though he still looked too shocked to do so, Adam released his grip on his collar, causing its wearer to stumble back against his chair, and stormed out of the restaurant, not looking back.

X X X X X X X X X X

GASP! Confrontations! XD Yeah, Adam's adorable when he's pissed. :) I think we all know what'll happen in the next chapter: Mallick will tell Adam he was in a Jigsaw game, too, and then there'll be some adorable friendship bonding. Not that that's as awesome as hot, gay sex, of course, but it's a start, right? X3

Speaking of awesome, _Dead __Inside_ and _Full __Moon_ are both epic songs, so I'd highly recommend checking them out if you haven't heard them. :)


End file.
